Chinese-language film or Chinese cinema? Review of an ongoing debate in the Chinese mainland

Ever since it is first introduced and then gradually adopted by many in the field of Chinese cinema studies, the term ‘Chinese-language film’ (huayu dianying) has been always contentious, not only because it tends to prioritize language’s role in defining a cinema, thus relegates the ‘Chinese’ films that speak non-Han languages to a negligible place, but also because critics and scholars in the field come from divergent political and cultural backgrounds and thus tend not to share the same view of what constitute ‘China’ and ‘Chinese.’ In one of the earliest publications that propagated the term, Ping-Hui Liao used the phrase ‘huawen dianying’ instead of ‘huayu dianying’ in his long introduction to discuss the collection of essays that critically examine the acclaimed films from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, including such classics as Yellow Earth, The Story of Qiu Ju, King of Children, Farewell My Concubine, Ruan Lingyu, The Terrorizers, A Brighter Summer Day and Banana Paradise. Despite this, as a less controversial term that encompasses the films produced not only in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also in Singapore and other Chinese diasporas, ‘Chinese-language film’ has been gradually accepted by scholars and critics of Chinese cinema from around the world. This is evidenced in both Chinese and English publications, chief among them Discourses on Contemporary Chinese-Language Film (edited by Tado Lee. Taipei, Taiwan: China Times Press, 1996), Legends of the Three Places: Two Decades of Chinese-Language Film (edited by Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, et al. Taipei, Taiwan: Taiwan Film Institute, 1999), Ten Directors of Chinese-Language Film (edited by Yuanying Yang. Hangzhou, Zhejiang: Zhejiang Photographic Press, 2000) and Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics (edited by Sheldon Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2005). But it turns out that the above consensus, reached around the turn of the century and shared by many in the field regardless of their place of origin, is fragile at best. Controversies and debates surrounding the term ‘Chinese-language film’ have struck back with a vengeance during its post-centennial years. Partly due to the frequent academic exchanges between mainland China-based scholars and scholars of Chinese-language film from the United States and the United Kingdom (strangely more often than their counterparts based in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore), these debates have centered on whether the use of ‘Chinese-language film’ is a reflection of Western ‘centralism’ or Americentrism